Shinsegae is a South Korean department store franchise, along with several other businesses, headquartering in Seoul, South Korea. The name of Shinsegae literally means "New World" in Korean. Its flagship store in Centum City, Busan, is the world's largest department store, surpassing the Macy's department store in New York City in 2009.
Shinsegae was originally part of Samsung Group, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group (Food/Chemicals/Entertainment), Saehan Group (Electronic Media/Apparel/Textiles), and the Hansol Group (Paper/Telecom). It owns the brands Shinsegae and E-Mart, and is in direct competition with Lotte Shopping and Hyundai Department Store Group. Currently it is the largest retailer in South Korea.
Shinsegae is also famous for its long history. The main branch of Shinsegae is the oldest department store in Korea. The main building of the store was opened in 1930 as the Gyeongseong branch of Mitsukoshi, a Japanese department store franchise. The store was acquired in 1945 by the late founder of Samsung group, Lee Byung-chull, and renamed Donghwa Department Store. After the Korean War (1950–1953) began, it was used for several years as a post exchange by the American army. In 1963, the store was given the name Shinsegae. The old building is currently used as a luxury hall.
Shinsegae was the first credit card company in South Korea. They issued its own charge card from 1967 to 2000. In 2000, Shinsegae sold its credit card division to KorAm Bank, which later acquired by Citibank Korea.
Samsung Group (삼성그룹, 三星그룹) is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. It comprises numerous subsidiaries and affiliated businesses, most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol.
Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chull in 1938 as a trading company. Over the next three decades the group diversified into areas including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities and retail. Samsung entered the electronics industry in the late 1960s and the construction and shipbuilding industries in the mid-1970s; these areas would drive its subsequent growth. Following Lee's death in 1987, Samsung was separated into four business groups - Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansol Group. Since the 1990s Samsung has increasingly globalised its activities, and electronics, particularly mobile phones and semiconductors, has become its most important source of income.
Notable Samsung industrial subsidiaries include Samsung Electronics (the world's largest information technology company measured by 2012 revenues), Samsung Heavy Industries (the world's second-largest shipbuilder measured by 2010 revenues), and Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T (respectively the world's 35th- and 72nd-largest construction companies).Other notable subsidiaries include Samsung Life Insurance (the world's 14th-largest life insurance company),Samsung Everland (operator of Everland Resort, the oldest theme park in South Korea),Samsung Techwin (a surveillance, aeronautics, optoelectronics, automations and weapons technology company) and Cheil Worldwide (the world's 19th-largest advertising agency measured by 2010 revenues).
Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture, and has been a major driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River". Its affiliate companies produce around a fifth of South Korea's total exports.
Lee Kun-Hee, (born Jan. 9, 1942, Ŭiryŏng, South Kyŏngsang province, Korea [now in South Korea]), South Korean businessman who was chairman (1987–2008) of the conglomerate Samsung Group and chairman of its flagship company, Samsung Electronics (2010– ).
Lee was the youngest son of Lee Byung-Chull, who founded Samsung in 1938. He majored in economics at Waseda University, Tokyo, and earned a master of business administration degree at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. An active sportsman, Lee spent his leisure time riding horses, racing sports cars on a private track, and raising dogs. In addition, he was president of the Korean Amateur Wrestling Association and was involved with a professional baseball team and amateur athletics.
In 1968 Lee joined Samsung, which was involved in electronics, machinery, chemicals, and financial services. He served as the quiet understudy of his father, who exercised absolute control over the conglomerate and decided against making two older sons his successors. After his father’s death in 1987, Lee became chairman of Samsung but left management to a corporate staff. In June 1993, however, Lee launched a dramatic revolution from the top to make Samsung—the largest Asian conglomerate outside Japan—internationally competitive. Declaring that Samsung was “second rate” by global standards, he called on each employee “to change everything but your family.” Lee attributed the shortcomings of Samsung to basic weaknesses in Korean society, including an educational system that stressed learning by rote and an authoritarian style of leadership. He ordered radical reforms. Under what Lee termed a “new management” concept, Samsung insisted that subordinates point out errors to their bosses. It also stressed quality of products over quantity, promoted women to the ranks of senior executives, and discouraged bureaucratic practices.
Having emerged from a shy figurehead to an assertive chief executive, Lee pushed Samsung into many new activities, such as automobile manufacturing. Bolstered by a surge of investment, he aimed to make 20 percent of Samsung’s products outside South Korea by the year 2000. Consequently, he built an electronics manufacturing complex in Wynyard, Eng., and semiconductor plants in both Austin, Texas, and Suzhou, China. He also acquired such companies as the U.S. computer maker AST Research, Rollei Camera in Germany, and Lux, a Japanese manufacturer of audio products. By 1996 Samsung Electronics ranked as the world’s leading exporter of memory chips, and the entire group’s revenues in 1995 totaled $87 billion, equivalent to about 19 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product.
In 1996 Lee was also among 11 prominent South Korean businessmen drawn into a political scandal over corporate contributions to former president Roh Tae Woo. A court ruled that such payments—though customary in South Korea—were bribes. In August 1996 Lee was sentenced to two years in prison, but the punishment was suspended for three years. He was later pardoned by Pres. Kim Young Sam. In the late 1990s, Lee guided Samsung safely through the Asian financial crisis, and at the start of the 21st century it was one of the largest conglomerates in the world. In April 2008, however, Lee was indicted on charges of breach of trust and tax evasion, and shortly thereafter he resigned as chairman of Samsung. In July he was convicted of tax evasion, and he was subsequently fined approximately $80 million and sentenced to three years suspended jail time. Lee was pardoned by the South Korean government in December 2009. In March 2010 Samsung Group executives made Lee the head of Samsung Electronics, the conglomerate’s largest division.
Louis Kraar
